A pair of hate-mongers will be sentenced Thursday for threatening behaviour and racially motivated harassment of a young black woman who lived on their street.

The final episode occurred July 16 as the young woman and her friend's 11-year-old daughter were walking in west Hamilton on their way to a variety store. They were confronted by two male neighbours, one of whom had been taunting the woman for weeks with hateful slurs and racial comments. This time, both men began to chant, "We hate niggers," as she and the girl walked down Emerson Street.

"It was especially frightening and disheartening to have one of these confrontations happen in front of (the child). I didn't want her to have to see harassment first-hand and it still bothers me greatly that she witnessed it," said the victim.

The woman told Ontario Court Justice Richard Jennis she was shocked by the level of malevolence aimed at her, and "instantly felt dehumanized and reduced to a thing ... "

"It was very stressful and thoroughly confounding that anyone would do this in this day and age, especially as the aggressors were so young and live in a heavily multicultural environment," she said.

Assistant Crown attorney Michael Fox said it was an aggravating factor on sentencing that the convicted men did not know the victim and that their crimes were based purely on the colour of her skin.

Fox described the crimes as "despicable offences" and suggested it should outrage every citizen in the country that incidents such as these were still taking place in 2010.

The Crown and defence lawyer David Walkling jointly recommended a sentence of six months in jail for Gill, followed by three years of probation.

Lawyer Ian Begg sought the same for Martin, but Fox urged six-to-nine months in custody for Begg's client because the conduct in his case was part of a continuing pattern of intimidation and harassment toward the victim.

Earlier that month, on July 3, the woman had been sitting in her living room when she heard a man outside making gunshot noises. She looked out her front window and saw her neighbour, Martin, on the sidewalk making gestures with his hand as if he were shooting a gun at her house.

Nine days later, the woman heard Martin and another man in the parking lot outside her bedroom window. They were loudly singing songs with racially offensive lyrics and yelling, "Go back to Africa."

The woman filed her first police report the next day. Two days later, as she and the 11-year-old girl were walking to the local variety store, they were confronted by Martin and Gill. Martin again made the gunshot noises and the sign of a gun in her direction.

When the men began to spew their racial slurs, the woman and child turned and headed for home. The woman told police Gill was close behind them as they ran inside the house and locked the door. Gill then began to pound on her door.

Once inside, the woman, the young girl and the child's mother moved to the middle of the home for fear that the men would break windows. After police arrived and took a second report, the two women took turns sitting guard on the porch through the night in case of further trouble.

Judge Jennis asked the lawyers to provide him with case law on sentences handed out in Canada for comparable crimes motivated by racial hatred. He remanded the pair into custody until sentencing tomorrow.

It takes a very special kind of douchebag to harass a woman and her young child. Richard Martin is such a person. No doubt he'll feel right at home where he'll be going and we have a feeling that he'll be there for a long time.

The ARC Collective

Mission Statement

A group of diverse but like-minded individuals, the members of ARC have come together in their common desire to fight hatred, bigotry, intolerance and violence because of the harm these antisocial behaviors cause to our society. In that effort, we will not use or sanction the use of illegal actions (such as violence or intimidation) in pursuit of our desired aims and if we learn of anyone who does use these unethical methods we will report those individuals to the authorities. Instead, we will use the guarantees found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that ensure freedom of legal speech and expression.

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Our contact email is arc(dot)collective200(at)gmail(dot)com for anyone interested in getting in touch with us.

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Race Traitor by Elisa Hategan

At age 16, Elisa Hategan was an alienated runaway who became recruited into Canada's most powerful white supremacist movement, the Heritage Front. She was groomed by top leaders to become a rising star of the extremist far-right movement. An errand girl for notorious Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, she was a witness to the illicit activities of an undercover CSIS agent and co-founder of the Heritage Front. At age 18, she turned against the group and spied on them for several months before testifying in court and going into hiding.